The Truth About Health Care For Illegal Immigrants

When a caller asked about illegal immigrants under health care reform, Obama said the topic is one of many where misinformation has taken root. “This has been an example of just pure misinformation out there. None of the bills that have been voted on in Congress, and none of the proposals coming out of the White House propose giving coverage to illegal immigrants — none of them,” he said. “That has never been on the table; nobody has discussed it. So everybody who is listening out there, when you start hearing that somehow this is all designed to provide health insurance to illegal immigrants, that is simply not true and has never been the case.”

Roughly half of the 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. don’t have health insurance, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, a nonpartisan research group. Like others who can’t afford medical care, illegal immigrants tend to flock to hospital emergency rooms, which, under a 1986 law, can’t turn people away, even if they can’t pay. Emergency-room visits, where treatment costs are much higher than in clinics, jumped 32% nationally between 1996 and 2006, the latest data available.

Does the Democrats’ health care bill overturn this 1986 law? Does the Democrat’s health care bill specifically rule out illegal immigrants from qualifying for health care?

On Friday, Democrats moved one step closer to giving free health insurance to the nation’s estimated 12 million illegal aliens when they successfully defeated a Republican-backed amendment, offered by Rep. Dean Heller, R-Nev., that would have prevented illegal aliens from receiving government-subsidized health care under the proposed plan backed by House Democrats and President Barack Obama.

The House Ways and Means Committee nixed the Heller amendment by a 26-to-15 vote along straight party lines, and followed this action by passing the 1,018-page bill early Friday morning by a 23-to-18 margin, with three Democrats voting against the plan.

The Democratic plan will embrace Obama’s vision of bringing free government medical care to more than 45 million uninsured people in America – a significant portion of whom are illegal aliens.

If the Democrats have no intention of covering illegal immigrants in their health plan, why did every single Democrat vote against an amendment that would have prevented illegal immigrants from receiving government subsidized health care? I mean, if I had no intention of doing something, I wouldn’t have a problem voting for an amendment that makes sure the thing I don’t want anyway doesn’t happen. Is that just me?

These Democrats are worse than the worst caricatures of used car salesmen. They will promise you whatever the heck you want to hear; they just won’t put it in writing or stand behind it. They are the worse kind of liars. Don’t trust what they say when what they do directly contradicts what they say.

If Democrats want to claim that their bill won’t provide coverage to illegal immigrants, then demand they put it in writing, and codify it into law. Don’t just blithely trust these weasels, or the propagandist mainstream media that is out to justify liberalism and vilify conservatism.

This Census [Bureau] report says that within the borders of the United States as of 2007 there were 45.65 people without health insurance. But this number, according to the Census Bureau, included 9.73 million foreigners, leaving only 35.92 Americans who were uninsured.

President Barack Obama claimed during his Wednesday night press conference that there are 47 million Americans without health insurance.

A simple check with the U.S. Census Bureau would have told him otherwise.

Obama said: “This is not just about the 47 million Americans who have no health insurance.”

That assertion conflicts with data in the Census Bureau report “Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2007.” The report was issued in August 2008 and contains the most up-to-date official data on the number of uninsured in the U.S.

The report discloses that there were 45.65 million people in the U.S. who did not have health insurance in 2007.

However, it also reveals that there were 9.73 million foreigners — foreign-born non-citizens who were in the country in 2007 — included in that number. So the number of uninsured Americans was actually 35.92 million.

And of those, “there were also 9.1 million people making more than $75,000 per year who did not choose to purchase health insurance,” CNSNews stated in a report based on the Census Bureau data.

That brings the number of Americans who lack health insurance presumably for financial reasons down less than 27 million.

The Census Bureau report also shows that the number of people without insurance actually went down in 2007 compared to the previous year — from 47 million to 45.65 million — while the number with insurance rose from 249.8 million to 253.4 million.

So I say tomato, you say tomahto. I say Obama is going to cover illegal immigrants, and Obama says he’s going to cover all Americans – and the fact that he considers illegal immigrants as “Americans” is completely beside the point. That’s the fine print, and who needs to waste time consider the fine print?

The point is that there is a massive disinformation campaign going on. Democrats and their mainline media propagandists baldly assert up one side and down the other that the bill doesn’t “give coverage to illegal immigrants.” And in the most rote, literalistic, never-mind-the-fine-print-just-sign-here mindset, it’s true: there isn’t a page that says, “We hereby grant illegal immigrants health care coverage because that’s just the kind of globalist-Marxist anti-American rat-bastards we are.”

But please don’t be so absolutely stupid that you don’t read the fine print.

17 Responses to “The Truth About Health Care For Illegal Immigrants”

Illegal aliens already get free healthcare and the only way to stop it is to get them out of this Country.

Illegal aliens have made America the dumping ground for all their illegal alien children, then we have to school them and give them free medical care.

I for one, am sick and tired of these ILLEGAL ALIENS snubbing their nose at our immigration laws and the many other laws of this Country. If our Federal Government can not ENFORCE our immigration laws, and get these ILLEGAL ALIENS out of this Country, then let the States do it! One way or another, an end has to come to this illegal immigration, and not with AMNESTY! Amnesty will only encourage more ILLEGAL ALIENS to invade our Country and reward those who broke our laws and raped the American taxpayer in many ways…depressing our wages, taking our jobs, overwhelming our schools with their ILLEGAL ALIEN children, driving without a license or car insurance, all the crime from stolen identities to rape, drugs and everything else.

It’s time for ZERO TOLERENCE with these ILLEGAL ALIENS. It’s time for them get out of this Country and back in their own Country where they belong. When we get rid of the ILLEGAL ALIENS, we will get rid of all the problems that go with them. THAT IS A FACT!

It is absolutely crazy making and infuriating to live through the daily barrage of lies and deception coming out of Obama and those who support him.
I told my husband recently, it’s like living in a non-stop episode of “The Twilight Zone.”
Enough already!

Mark Levin describes the perversion of our immigration system in Liberty and Tyranny. Basically, the United States used to have the commonsense policy of only allowing in those people who had the skills and training to help make this country a better place. And then the Statist Democrats came along and radically altered the character of American society and the relationship of the governed to their government in the form of their Hart-Celler Act which introduced the notion of chain migration. Instead of giving preference to those who would build this country, we began letting in immigrants on the basis of family connections. And we began to bring in people who were poorer, less educated, and more dependent. The result has been an exploding immigration rate and the seeking by more and more of Latin America as the place to go.

Democrats have betrayed this country for the sake of votes – and every single time a “journalist” brings up the question that Republicans don’t dare reverse these policies lest they lose elections, you can see how cynical and self-serving the Democrats’ treasonous plan truly was.

The New Testament says that the man who doesn’t provide for his own children is worse than an unbeliever. And that is exactly what America has become: we are providing resources for illegals when we don’t have enough for our own citizens. That is immoral. It’s as despicable as a father who lets his own children go hungry so he can feed other peoples’ kids to look good.

We live in a time similar to the era of the fascists and the communists, when propaganda machines blared the “truth” that the totalitarians wanted them to broadcast.

There is no question that the Democrats’ plan – if passed – will provide health care for illegal immigrants by simple default. But the mainstream media – which would NEVER IN A THOUSAND YEARS READ THE CONSTITUTION IN A LITERALISTIC MANNER AND EXCLUDE AS BEING IN THE DOCUMENT ANY DOCTRINE THAT ISN’T SPECIFICALLY DEFINED – is doing exactly that to help the Democrats now. We will give health care to illegal aliens by default by the Democrats who all along have counted illegal immigrants among the “47 million AMERICANS” who have no health insurance, and are about to count illegal aliens as AMERICAN CITIZENS in the upcoming census.

Come, ye wretches. Come from everywhere. Bring us nothing but your insatiable desire to have Americans provide for you while our own country goes bankrupt.

And just remember as our debt skyrockets, what is good for the self-serving partisan interest of the Democrat Party is good for America!!!

No matter if there is any health reform bill passed or not, illegals will still get free medical care, no matter the cost. So will the poor continue to get free care. As mentioned it is a Federal law, and it was passed in 1986. Its easy to say this is wrong and a expensive burden on the American citizen, easy to say unless you personally are the gatekeeper at the medical institution and had to make that choice on turning away the sick and injured. Health reform isn’t about the poor, illegals or seniors who will continue to get health care paid for by the government. it’s about the rest of us, the middle class and our rights to affordable health care. I’m 60 and covered by a plan provided by my employer, and i have seen my monthly share go up 275% in 6 years. I had a heart problem when I was 40, and haven’t had a problem since. Last week I went on-line and got 16 quotes for health care from 3 sites and was called by 4 agents to fine tune to quote. Lowest quote was $1,345 a month for myself and wife, who has never had any health issues, and the plan had $15,000 family deductible before insurance kicked in, and even then it only paid 80% of any hospital costs. Also for me any heart problems were not covered for the first 18 months. I ask you to try the same and get some quotes it might open your eyes to the problem. Also are you aware that all insurance companies are exempt from price fixing and that they do set agreed rates among themselves. The McCarran-Ferguson Act of 1945, gave insurance companies exception from the Sherman anti-trust act, the only industry that can legally have collusion and price fixing. Without the repeal of this act you will never have competitive rates from insurance companies. Back to illegals, there are here because big business and the agriculture industry want them here. Illegal are here only because there are jobs for them, no jobs and the number of illegals would drop significantly. We don’t need fences on the border, we just need to take away the incentive to cross the border, a job in the US. Sure they get the lousy and very low pay jobs, but they are jobs and income that they can’t get in their own country. We need to enforce the immigration laws we now have, demand e-hire for all employers small and big and for offender employers make the fines huge, end of problem. Yet no administration, Dem or Gop, has pushed to enforce immigration law, why, the loss of reelection funds from those that benefit from a large pool of illegal labor in the US. Bottom line is to treat the condition, not the symptom.

I didn’t go nuts looking, but I didn’t see anywhere where people were saying, “No problem if health insurers collude and fix prices; it’s perfectly legal!” Rather, they are SUING companies on the allegation.

I would submit that we DON’T have to provide illegal immigrants free health coverage. Barring immediate life-critical emergencies, if they do not have insurance, and do not pay, we should not be supplying benefits. And in the life-critical situation, if they can’t pay, they have no business being in this country and should go from the hospital to their home countries.

So I disagree that we have no choice but to provide benefits to illegal immigrants. We’ve got too many politicians – MOSTLY DEMOCRATS – who pander to this group in order to win them to their side to create a political powerbase.

We need to improve our health care system, no doubt. Primarily, we need to find ways to bring our costs down. But government isn’t the way to do that. Unless you think a $400 hammer or a $2,700 coffee maker is a bargain, and unless you think the DMV is an excellent service provider.

Government is MASSIVELY involved in health care. They directly provide most of our health care today, and no hospital or insurance company is not burdened by overwhelming government regulations. So the argument that the private health system is broken, and we need government is a straw man; government is the one that broke the system in the first place. For instance, as you acknowledge, hospitals HAVE to take in any patient who comes through the door because of a GOVERNMENT LAW; not because they are in any way inclined to want to do so. Paying for millions of people who don’t bother to pay themselves is part of the reason that your premiums are so high.

Michael Eden,
I only became aware,40 years ago, of the McCarran-Ferguson Act of 1945 because its repeal was a focus of the industry I worked in, Auto Body Repair. Many state and national auto body associations have attempted to have this law repealed almost every year over those 40 years. The insurance industry is the main customer, about 90% of the work that body shops perform. When there is a change in the hourly pay rate paid the insurance companies they all announce them to the shops within the same time period and the variance from one company to another is less than $2 a hour. One day years ago they all announced that they would not pay for the shop supplies used to repair a vehicle and that announcement was uniform and came in the same week from all the insurers. Yet there have been many cases were some shops agreed that they would draw a line in the sand and stick to an hourly rate that afford them a fair profit. In every case the insurance industry had these shops prosecuted by the state under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. Health insurance is run no different by the insurance companies and if the McCarran-Ferguson Act is repealed we will see better benefits for lower prices that would be the result of a fair and true open market that is competing for customers. My point on illegals is that they are breaking the law and every effort should be made to deport them and use the laws on the books that are being ignored by federal and state authorities. But because they work cheap, businesses big and small want that illegal workforce, if they didn’t they wouldn’t be here because there would be no income available to them. Visit any emergency room after 6PM and its packed with the poor and illegals seeking non emergency treatments for minor health issues you and i would visit our Doctor, not the emergency room. What I was saying that those that truly are injured or have life threating issues its morally tough to say no, its not in our DNA as most of us do have compassion for our fellow man. I’ve been sick or injured both in the UK and Canada and was treated at no cost in both countries and I wasn’t a poor indigent visitor I was in both countries on business trips for major US corporations. In Canada all provinces post on the Internet the names and pecking house order of those waiting for non life threating procedures, and the wait is no longer than we have here for the same procedures. I had a very painful joint problem that required surgery last year, between my doctors schedule and the time needed to get approval from my insurance company I had to wait 6 weeks for the procedure, 3 weeks longer than people in Canada on the posted lists for the same procedures. The “dumping of Canadians” here for surgery is done by the Canadian citizen. 2 years ago a business associate told me his father would be getting surgery in the Seattle next week and since he would be done to visit him maybe we could have a chance for a business meeting. Seems his dad had some blockage and needed a bypass, it wasn’t at the time life threating, but would be in the long term, so he was on a 5 week wait list. So he did what many Canadians do, he flew to Seattle, and after he was across customs he faked a heart attack in the airport and was taken by paramedics to a hospital ER and had the surgery done the next day. In many cases the Canadian government does reimburse the local hospital. This is a daily event that happen numerous times a day at the airport or hotels in Seattle with Canadians. If these folks were in a life threating situation in Canada they get that operation immediately, but just like here if its a condition that can wait, we schedule the procedure down the road. My dd waited for 4 weeks for his bypass years ago because it wasn’t a immediate threat at that time.

you are a true idiot.
You cant have everything….
The healthcare plan and the issue of the 1986 bill are two completely different issues. To try and deal with an issue as controversial as the right of hospitals to deny emergency care in combination with healthcare reform would be as stupid as your rhetorical argument.

i hope you get cancer and your insurer refuses to pay because you had pre-existing asthma.

I cite a Newsmax article that describes the REPEATED attempts of Republicans to force Democrats to codify into law their bullcrap claims that their plan won’t cover illegal immigrants. And every single one of them has been unanimously voted down by Democrats.

What Democrats refused to allow is a citizenship requirement. If there is no requirement to prove citizenship to take advantage of the free/cheap health care, then, Idiot, I leave it to you to explain how we will keep illegal immigrants from obtaining such care.

If Democrats don’t want to give health care to illegal immigrants, will they please actually vote against giving health care to illegal immigrants? That would be really nice.

Idiot believes whatever the Democrats say regardless of what the Democrats actually do. When the Democrats say 2 and 2 are 5, Idiot says, “Of course it is!”

Unless the 1986 law is overturned, illegal immigrants will continue to be provided with health care in every single emergency room in the country. And furthermore, unless the 1986 law is overturned, judges will almost certainly require illegal immigrants to be provided with the benefits of whatever health care passage is passed. That in addition to the fact that, sans a “proof of citizenship” measure in the bill, illegal immigrants would be able to obtain the same health care as citizens anyway.

So, I’m sorry, Idiot. You’re just an idiot.

I’ll end with this. As vile and nasty of a person as you are, I nevertheless hope you don’t experience the things you curse me with. But what a truly hateful human being you are.

Thank you, HL. Knowing that you are on my side (and Idiot is not) inspires me. I know that your prayers, coming from a righteous heart that knows God, will be far more effective than “Idiot’s” curses.

It is frankly amazing that there continues to be a mainline media blackout on ObamaCare and illegal immigrants. Unless there is a provision that checks the citizenship status of everyone applying for ObamaCare – and there is not, and the Republicans have repeatedly been voted down by Democrats trying to introduce one – illegal immigrants will be able to obtain health care benefits under Obama’s plan. That is simply a fact. And yet we see this ongoing, “There’s nothing in the bill that provides benefits to illegals.”

There’s nothing in Wal Mart’s policy that provides groceries to illegal immigrants, either. But you know what? They shop there every single day because there’s nothing that prevents them from shopping there.

Dear Michael
I wanted to pass on this info to you in the event you had not come across it. It contains a lot of info on Obama, his associates and their Communist links. I don’t know any other way to do it other than put the link here. I hope that is OK :)
hl

I have been reading Michelle Malkin’s book “Culture of Corruption,” which details so much stinking garbage from this administration and all it’s corrupt contacts and cozy networks that it is positively unreal.

One of the things she documents is how Chicago liberals have congratulated themselves for helping the poor even as they have screwed them again and again. She also documents how some of the biggest thieves from Wall Street, et al who created our financial disaster have Obama’s ear and his heart.